Mischievous Function

Stereotypes

Meanwhile, in the lobby...

Pencil and Match sat across from each other at the breakfast table, the former looking down at her phone and the latter looking down at where her phone would have been as a coping mechanism.

Match glanced up at Pencil for a bit. Then, she looked back down at her hands, still in phone-holding position. For some weird reason, she was feeling the gradual urge to tilt her head back up and around, but her instincts told her to fight it and keep staring down.

But without an actual phone to keep her attention, her intrusive thoughts eventually won, and she looked up. She found herself staring first at the massive glass skylight in the ceiling, then at the massive glass wall near the back of the hotel, and finally at the breakfast buffet near the wall. At the end of the buffet line, a guest placed some tongs back on a tiny plate in front of the hash browns before they turned and walked toward the table.

She tilted her head in confusion, unsure what to make of this as her brain started working overtime. But before it could give her an answer, her intrusive thoughts commanded her to look back at the table, so she did. And she found, still lying on her plate on the table, a couple of fresh hash browns sitting next to some bacon and eggs. She glanced to the side of it and saw a fork—the same one she had subconsciously grabbed on her way out of the line.

Match felt reluctance bubble up in her very being, and she glanced from side to side to check if anyone was watching, just in case she messed something up. Then, she slowly reached for her fork and grabbed it. She stared at one of the hash brown patties for a few seconds before twisting her hand and pressing the side of the fork down through the middle of it. Once she had chopped the patty in half, she stuck the three pointy parts of the fork into the closer half and ate the hash brown.

"Is this..." she thought to herself as she chewed, "...what people call eating breakfast at the breakfast table?"

She looked down at the other half of the hash brown contemplatively. "I've obviously done this several times before, but...why does it feel like I'm discovering this for the first time?"

"Pffft. Hey, Match."

Match raised her eyebrows and looked at Pencil, who had glanced over to her side toward some of the lobby couches. Pencil nodded toward one of the couches and smirked, "What do you think they're talking about?"

She traced Pencil's line of sight to the couch where Blocky and Snowball were sitting. Pen was in the armchair next to them, and Eraser was sitting on the coffee table itself. "Probably, like, some stupid boy stuff," she scoffed with a grin. "Like, like video games or, like, war crimes or something."

Pencil grinned back. "Probably. Boys are so stupid and shallow. They can't ever talk about anything serious or worthwhile."

"Oh, yeah. Like, for sure. It's always, like, dumb stuff like who, like, farted the loudest."

"Yeah. Or who's strongest."

Match smirked and crossed her arms. "I know, right? That's, like, such a boy thing."

——————————

"YES! I hate how, like, the YRS expects us to be on time with everything, but, ohhh, you screw up once or you're late by a day—oh, no, that's your fault," Pen ranted, his hands zipping through the air to express his frustration. "Like, remind me why we're the ones filling out the tax forms when you guys can just audit everyone—which means you already have the frickin' information?!"

"It pays the bills," Blocky replied with a disappointed sigh. "Especially in Yoyleland. Too many people with taxes to pay and not enough people to prepare them. You implement return-free filing, you nuke an entire section of the private sector and the economy. And the Yoyle government—or pretty much any capitalistic, democratic government, for that matter—would rather tick off a bunch of disorganized individual peasants than tick off a bunch of organized businesses with money and power. That's not even considering the fact that you would then have to find people to work for the government and file everyone's taxes for them, which means you have to pay their salaries. And guess where the government gets their money to pay the G-men's salaries?"